The UK job market has experienced a notable dip in both job vacancies and advertised salaries for the first time this year, with businesses taking a pause in hiring activities during the summer months, according to the latest UK Job Market Report by Adzuna, a leading smarter job search engine.

After witnessing six consecutive months of steady growth, the total count of job vacancies across the UK saw a decline in July, settling at 1,047,366, marking a decrease of -1.11 percent in comparison to June figures.

Alongside this, the average advertised salaries also experienced a slight dip of -0.15 percent, sliding from £37,780 to £37,750.

This pattern of reduced job vacancies aligns with historical trends, as businesses traditionally scale down hiring efforts during the typically quieter summer months before reviving recruitment activities for the fourth quarter.

Last year, a similar trend was observed, with a decline of -2.08 percent in hiring between June and July. This indicates that the current reduction is almost half of what it was during the same period the previous year.

Despite this month-on-month decline, the year-on-year discrepancy has been consistently narrowing. In May, the year-on-year gap stood at -16.8 percent, which then shrunk to -12 percent in June. By July 2023, this gap further decreased to just -10.96 percent in comparison to July 2022, signalling positive indications for a sustained recovery in the UK job market.

Job seekers

Despite the drop in advertised salaries, job seekers continue to encounter some of the highest pay figures since early 2021. However, for the first time, job postings without specified salary information (50.1% of job ads) outnumber those with such details (49.9%). This shift has implications for transparency campaigns advocating for open disclosure of pay rates, as employers appear to be more reticent about disclosing salary information for new hires.

In various sectors, legal and logistics emerged as the saving grace, displaying increased job vacancies despite a decline in most other sectors. Logistics and warehouse positions experienced the most significant rise in vacancies (+3.89%), reversing a three-month downturn. The legal sector observed a rise of (+3.13%), followed by retail (+2.74%), and manufacturing (+1.04%). Teaching, while experiencing a slight decline of -2.27 percent between June and July, remains the largest recruiting sector on Adzuna, with over 120,000 vacancies, which is still a 34.99 percent increase from the previous year.

In the IT sector, which is the second-largest for recruitment with almost 99,000 open positions, vacancies have not yet reached previous highs. Monthly figures in this sector have dropped by -2.92 percent compared to June, and annual figures have decreased by -42.1 percent since July of the preceding year. Graduate job vacancies have similarly decreased by -2.17 percent monthly and by -22.24 percent annually compared to last year’s statistics.

How is the recruitment market?

The average time required to fill roles has increased slightly to 35.4 days, up from the previous record low of 34.6 days. This suggests that while the jobs market remains tight, it reflects ongoing shortages of talent in certain sectors. Teaching roles continue to be the fastest to fill, taking just 31.3 days on average.

Despite the dip in advertised salaries, a number of sectors have experienced strong salary growth in 2023. The annual change in advertised salaries across the board demonstrates the upward trend, with only three sectors observing a decline in average advertised salaries compared to the previous year: scientific and quality assurance jobs (-1.58%), IT jobs (-4.24%), and HR & recruitment roles (-5.91%). Social work jobs have seen the most substantial increase in advertised salaries, rising by +20.47 percent to an average of £33,577 compared to the previous July. On the other hand, roles in PR, advertising, and marketing observed the smallest annual increase (+0.04%).

Regional variations in advertised salaries reveal that Northern Ireland continues to experience the highest annual growth in salaries, with a +9.5% increase since July 2022. The East Midlands (+7.84%) and Yorkshire and the Humber (+7.64%) also saw significant rises, while London was the only region where annual salaries dropped, albeit by a marginal -1.22 percent, which is an improvement from June’s decline of -1.33 percent.

When considering cities, Leeds leads the pack with the largest annual change in average advertised salaries, experiencing a robust +10.04 percent increase compared to the previous year. Belfast follows closely with a growth of +8.16%, and similar positive trends are observed in Liverpool (+6.73%), Bradford (+5.73%), and Cardiff (+4.34%). Notably, London and Cambridge continue to see salaries decrease, but the rate of decline is slowing down, particularly in Cambridge, where the annual salaries are down by -3.74 percent compared to June’s decline of -5.53 percent.

Cambridge has maintained its position as the city with the least job competition, boasting 0.25 job seekers per vacancy, a consistent figure since March 2023. However, the city’s annual job vacancies have decreased by -9.06 percent in comparison to the previous year. Guildford (0.38), Exeter (0.41), and Oxford (0.57) also have low competition levels, while Bradford continues to exhibit the highest competition at 5.72 job seekers per vacancy.

Warehouse work remains the most trending job on Adzuna’s Intelligence Portal for the second consecutive month. This metric gauges demand across various occupations and assigns an Interest Quotient to each role, with higher quotients reflecting greater demand. Lorry driving and social care roles hold the second and third positions respectively in terms of trending jobs.

Advertised salaries

Andrew Hunter, Co-Founder at Adzuna, remarked, “The UK jobs market has entered its summer slowdown period with vacancies down, advertised salaries down, and the time to fill roles increasing. While it’s natural to see vacancies fall during the summer months, as companies traditionally slow hiring, the early figures for July’s jobs data will demonstrate to UK policymakers that inflation truly should be on a downward trajectory. Despite the wider slowdown, sectors continue to see advertised annual salaries rise compared to last year, with only a handful of sectors experiencing falling salaries. That being said, employers are becoming more secretive about pay rates, with over half of job adverts going live without salary details for the first time ever, in a blow to salary transparency campaigners.”

Adzuna’s monthly UK Job Market Report provides the latest snapshot of employment opportunities across the nation, based on every online-advertised job vacancy in the UK from over 1,000 sources across all regions. Adzuna also supplies real-time data to key entities such as the Number 10 Dashboard, the Cabinet Office, and the Office for National Statistics labour market indices. More detailed data breakdowns are available through Adzuna Intelligence, offering insights at a local authority, job title, or skill level.

 

 

 

 

Amelia Brand
Amelia Brand

Amelia Brand is the Editor for HRreview, and host of the HR in Review podcast series. With a Master’s degree in Legal and Political Theory, her particular interests within HR include employment law, DE&I, and wellbeing within the workplace. Prior to working with HRreview, Amelia was Sub-Editor of a magazine, and Editor of the Environmental Justice Project at University College London, writing and overseeing articles into UCL’s weekly newsletter. Her previous academic work has focused on philosophy, politics and law, with a special focus on how artificial intelligence will feature in the future.